Saint_lambden

The whole 'taking off a midfielder/forward and putting on another defender' never works, at least not for us. It just invites pressure and instills an attitude of 'we're defending what we've got' rather than having a front-foot mentality. Right the way back to Adkins taking Billy Sharp off for Dan Harding against Pompey in 2012, it baffles me each time. Plus our ability to never stop the cross or attack the ball in with any intensity, it's a toxic combination against sides that are direct.

Lincoln have had more shots from set-pieces than any other Championship team so far this season (25), 50% of their shots! Going to have be on our game from that point of view.

Has to be a win if we're serious about promotion. Won't be easy - again a very physical side who will be direct but we should show too much quality for them. Bring Matsuki back in on the right as Fellows was poor last night and would be tempted to rotate JWP in for Bragg who has played a lot of minutes in the last two, for a bit of freshness. 1-2 Saints.

Really need another forward...

Stuttgart did bid for Jander a couple of weeks ago but we told them where to go. Don't know fee. It was when they were expecting Stiller to leave so, given he looks to be staying, they haven't pursued it further (or our demands were too high, or both).

For what it’s worth, lad I know from work who supports Forest really rates him. Has captained England youth teams, played regularly in Europa League for them last season and has just been unlucky that Murillo and Milenkovic have had such a decent partnership together that he hasn’t had more minutes. Plus he can play right-back too which helps cover for Bree.

What’s the logic behind that? We signed Schlotterbeck to play left-sided CB and he was superb on Saturday. Abbott is a RCB so Stephens and will rotate with Wood.

People annoyed that we’re signing a player they’ve never seen play instead of another player they’ve never seen play

Played once and was sent off 13 minutes in to it. Full international doing some very heavy lifting here

And a LW'er when Edozie goes.

Looking on another level at the moment, despite missing most of pre-season. Top, top player.

Adam Markhiev - who Nurnberg signed to replace Jander - is one we did like but not sure if a) we’ll be signing another CM or b) whether we’d want to still do business with them following the stories of the potential legal action they want to take against us.

Trying to sign Aster Vranckx - midfielder - from Wolfsburg.

They’re a terrrific side - so well organised, fit, strong and tough to beat. All the things we aren’t at present. 0-2.

We’ve bid for Falchener the CB from Viking who Wrexham were after a few weeks ago

Anyone keeping count of how many goals we concede from down our left hand side? Whether it's Wellington or Manning at left-back, opposition teams constantly target us - knowing that Stephens is LCB too. Biggest concern for me is the physical side of the game. We get shrugged off far too easily, aren't aggressive enough off the ball and it's far too easy to play through us. If a strong CB and CM aren't signed in the next week - we'll be midtable at best.

We had a scout at LASK v Celtic last night. Could be for any number of the home team's players, but we have looked at Bogarde who is a number 8 type before so maybe it could be him.

As I said on here a couple of weeks ago, Solak tried to persuade him Serb to Serb but sounds like that hasn't been successful.

Quarshie has a loan offer from Paderborn

Ah, there's the bi-monthly story to the German media from his agent.

Peretz Bree THB Wood Manning Downes Bragg Fellows Azaz Scienza Larin 2-1 Saints, winner in stoppage time

The reality on incomings is simply that we need to offload some more dead wood before we can press ahead with incomings as some of those here are on big wages having signed in the PL days. We can only register 25 senior players and we don't want situations like with Edozie, Aribo etc. in the first half of last season where they're just training and picking up a hefty wage for not actually playing. When you look at the likes of Wolves, West Ham and Boro, whilst their first XIs are very strong for this level - beyond that they are very light in terms of depth whereas we're still suffering from bloating the squad with quantity over quality in successive transfer windows 2/3/4/5 years ago. Ramsdale and Bazunu (both hopefully buy but most likely loan), Quarshie (loan), Larios, Kay Sanda, Sugawara, BBD, Downs and possibly Edozie and Archer all need shifting which is a huge task individually as well as collectively. Then you're looking at a 3rd GK, CB (or two if THB goes on top of the above), CM to replace Charles, another LW if Edozie goes and a striker to come in (they're still pursuing Ratkov so I don't believe the noise that we're done on that front). A busy final couple of weeks to the window if we really want to get the squad to where we want/need it to be which doesn't help start the season well - added to the cloud over the manager - so we need a win on Saturday and to get to positive points ASAP in the meantime.

And people wonder why our fans get labelled deluded by others in this league.

Anyone that thought we were was in fantasy land. 4 point deficit to begin with in a much stronger league than last time around and the hangover from the most embarrassing saga in our history. Top 8 is far more realistic but we need much more to be done on transfers first.

Benfica’s highest ever fee paid is 25m euros. Given we’d want at least what we got for Charles, they’d have to pay around 10m euros above their record transfer to get him. Unlikely.